CBRTOUR

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Help us plan our next Bead Tour.

Where would you like to go?

Email me at the Office.

Southeast Asia (Thailand, the Philippines, maybe Indonesia). Great bargains, many bead-loving people. Exotic locales.
Eastern Asia (Korea, Hong Kong, China, Singapore). More bargains, an excursion into one of the world's oldest cultures.
North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt) A world apart, ancient yet modern.
West Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo). An adventure tour to lands where beads are loved.
India. The Land of Beads.

What time of the year would you like to go?

Pete Francis will be your guide; he knows all of these areas. Each tour includes:

Outstanding Historical sites
Great Shopping Opportunities
Archaeological Sites
Crafts Centers, both for beads and other crafts.
Beadmaking Villages and Centers not on anyone else's itinerary
Comfortable accommodations, informed guides, lots of fun and a wealth of memories.

These are tours with real value. You can do a tour on your own, make all the arrangements and go through all the hassles. You can hire local guides who will give you dates and details and local legends. But with our tour, we take the hassles and give you much more.

My job as tour leader is to help you along and help you make real sense of what you are experiencing. The tour will weave both the history and present culture of an area together through the medium of beads and the other arts. You will get a taste of the real lands, their villages and rural areas. And, yes, you will be quite comfortable.

In conjunction with Select Tours International, I am developing Bead and Art Tours. They are designed to give you a thorough picture of the culture, history and archaeology of a country or region. They provide specialized information on beads and related crafts and the opportunity to buy what you are seeing made in front of your eyes. We favor small, compatible groups who are deeply interested in the role beads have played in other societies.

History of the Bead and Art Tours

The first time I went overseas was on a tour. It was in 1966 with a few classmates and a Professor. We went Europe and the Middle East, covering the land between Glasgow and Damascus. It was an excellent introduction.

In 1971, I started traveling on my own, not returning to the US until 1979. In 1975 I fell in love with beads and the disciplines used to study them. By 1979 I was researching beads full-time. Since then I have been around the world a dozen times, and lived for extended periods in most of the places listed above.

In 1985, I led a Bead Tour to India. It was an enriching experience for everyone. I learned a lot (often from mistakes) about leading such tours. This time Cipora Kronen (of Select Tours) will be with us to smooth out any rough edges.

Contact cipora@aol.com -- tell her we sent you!

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